However, in some cases, determining whether you are good enough to make a career out of something can involve a substantial investment in time, money, and/or opportunity costs. For example, some of the pre-med preparation and all of the time and money spent applying to medical school is wasted if the pre-med does not get into any medical school.
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People are very aware of this. And I assume they think very hard about going down this path. I would. We are currently in that process. Then you think of risk mitigation strategies. You will pick some early markers through college – like that grade in bio-chem, for instance.
The only financial conditions we put on our kids was how much college tuition we would pay. We wanted them to avoid debt if at all possible. They could apply to private schools as long as the financial aid worked out. We would only pay for four years.
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Rolling stones don’t lead interesting lives. And this quote was likely from a time long since passed when people needed to focus on one thing before the industrial and technology revolution.
The thing about linear and narrow thinking is, it’s often more restrictive rather than productive. Many people have demonstrated the ability to do many things exceedingly well at the same time in their lives. Creative spirits are often doing many things at once. I know people who fulfill their passions outside of work and those who have work lives filled with amazing things.
It has nothing to do with income level. Some people are fulfilled and some are not.
I’m confused by these two contradictory statements. IF experimentation is detrimental but people are experimenting with parallel things than which is it that you are stating? Are you saying that it’s ok to do many things but only outside of one’s career?
I am saying it is expensive to experiment with many things as they pertain to your career. There is time to experiment on a few things. There isn’t open ended time. This is partly from experience with one kid going through college, and an upfront decision to do some amount of experimentation. Time is a hard constraint. True experimentation requires you to spend summers trying various kinds of work. It is not enough to just take courses. And there are only so many summers. And realistically you won’t get much freshman summer. And senior summer is too late etc. And this is a kid who thinks (probably correctly) that he can get most kinds of summer internships that he wants. Even this is not enough. For example, you can’t think that if you like Biology you will like medicine. I have had a relative recently tell me that he wasn’t sure he liked medicine until he is well past his residency, fellowship, and a year or two of working. It is way past late by that point to attempt a course correction if you dislike things. Such is life.
Thanks for the explanation. That makes sense. I think of it in some similar ways. One has to try on various hats and things to see if there is interest and skill in those areas. I also think my creative side would then add an additional step which is combining other side interests and skills and coming up with a direction or two to follow.
IMO, the best/most interesting jobs are at the intersection of multiple interests. And they are harder to outsource/replace. Combined majors are growing in popularity at the educational level, eg. BME, Data science, biotech to use some STEM areas. But most people are still focused on the way you described it. I think many people are afraid to take the path less traveled. But that it also due to the high costs of a college education and perceived ROI.
Such is life if you make it that way. I have a good friend who decided he didn’t like being a lawyer after working as a lawyer for five years. He went back to school and is now a doctor (with the full support of his wife). He loves his work (and has a huge fan base at work due to his legal prowess). Was it easy? No. He and his family live very interesting lives, however.
Your kid in college (based on what you’ve shared before) seems to be very focused on making lots of money early in their career. There’s nothing wrong with that but it does mean that a certain hyper focus is necessary for them. Just curious, does your kid have a plan B if their professional life does not end up as they had imagined it? Or will they cross that bridge if they come across it? I’ve been having a lot of discussions with my family about alternate plans and if they are necessary and I’m curious what other people think.
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I think we had some disagreement on this before 
Our experience is that this fine grained credentialing didn’t matter.
Two days ago my son went out for dinner with kids who were interning in nyc from other colleges and at other employers. He then told me that this one particular kid told him that he can’t get a data science internship unless he is a data science major. Then my son listed several people that he knew who went to work for Google brain out of a regular CS major. He said, if I want to, I can get into Google brain, and if I can get into google brain, I can get most other data science jobs either concurrently or a year later (and you’d of course ask why would you leave google brain and go to some other random data science job). The point is the largest most reputable employers in a particular space are not credential sensitive. They are expertise sensitive. They are also raw iq (to be interpreted broadly) sensitive if you have broad spectrum expertise in adjacent areas.
We are very non-sensitive about narrow credentialing :-).
There are a lot of Pan Bs :-). He has given this some light thought. This not a problem. He is trying finance this summer. He can go to swe, product, mgmt consulting, vc, fin tech, grad school. It’s not a big deal.
There’s nothing wrong with worshipping at the alter of the almighty buck 
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I think that there are some additional factors that my kids should consider when deciding what sort of jobs to pursue as a career. Having an excellent paying job is great, but it’s not ALWAYS just about the money.
For example, one of our kids is interested in “something medical” for a profession. And yes, she’s at the start of the exploration of those options right now. But that’s ok. She just finished 10th grade and most 16 yr olds don’t know yet what they want to be when they grow up.
So I’ve been talking with her about a few factors that I think one should consider when making a big decision like this. And it comes down to weighing all of the pro’s and con’s of the various options before you…factors like:
- Does the position require a graduate degree?
- If so, how many years of additional schooling is required before you can start working in that job/career?
- How much, on average, will that grad degree cost you?
- What would the average loan payment/month be after graduation? And what might your starting salary be? How much would that leave you with to live on afterwards?
- What’s the overall job satisfaction rate for people working in that job?
- Does one area vs another experience higher or lower burn out rates? Why might that be (i.e., brainstorm, then think some more, analyze)?
- Are you willing to work for a couple of years with slightly lower pay in exchange for a certain $$ amount of your medical/healthcare grad school student loans being paid off for you?
- What if you decide that you want to work in a different medical specialty than the one you start out with? How easy or difficult is it to switch?
- Are you looking for something that’s more M-F 8-5 or are you willing to work odd hours, odd shifts, being on call a lot + working most major holidays for several years?
- Do you think that you might want to have kids some day? If so, 1 of you (either you or your partner) will probably need to have a more predictable work schedule, assuming 1 of you does not decide to be a stay-at-home parent.
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There are more considerations, as usual :-).
Interesting work. Intolerance to boredom is high.
There are also strong opinions on what constitutes boring.
WLB – options being considered are 8.30 to 6 type work day.
It is good to go through this level of rigor in thinking things through.
I think it is OK and realistic to not necessarily take a straight path in one’s education and career. Often with experience, people might go down an alternate pathway than first planned. I don’t see anything wrong with that. New experiences can lead to discoveries of the right fit, so to speak.
Something of this sort happened in my older daughter’s case. She got an undergraduate degree in Architectural Studies. She then entered a 3.5 year MArch program at MIT which leads to becoming a licensed architect. She liked architecture an she liked MIT. But after 1.5 years in the program, she realized she did not love design studio which is a huge part of the program and is required. She didn’t want to be a designer. She liked the other courses besides studio and wanted to focus on sustainability in architecture. She worried that people would think she was nuts to leave the program at MIT to focus on this specialty but we supported her making a change in graduate programs. She then went to UC-Berkeley for two years and obtained an MS in Architecture in Building Science and Sustainability, which she loved. In all, it still took the 3.5 years she had originally set to do in grad school, but it was between two different programs. She now is the Director of Sustainability in a very well known architecture firm and is very happy doing what amounts to as a dream job. So, while she didn’t entirely switch fields, she did switch grad programs midway through to specialize in one aspect of her field.
My other kid stayed true to her intended path and degree program, and is doing what she trained to do. However, she added two related careers to it that she did not train to do in college and evolved over time (she has 3 concurrent careers, though they are in the same general field).
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Hey, if you can find a career that pays at the top end of the scale (CS, Engineering, VC, management consulting, fin tech, etc.), isn’t boring, maybe even gets you excited to go to work each day, offers an excellent work-life balance, then hallelujah, you’ve hit a gold mine! PTL!
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Personally, I’d think either could have success. Thing is, some people hear about a barrier and don’t try 3-4 ways around it. I’d personally hire either of those kids CS/Data science and so would many others. Google or not.
Bigger question is, why let a single company determine one’s direction? Kids who have a plan with a plan B can often find and develop skills as the market changes and add things based on new developments/tech and their own interests.
Those who are developing their own interests can also fine tune what they want to pursue. Some things are logical like biomedical engineering and have clear paths but other kids put together their own interests and that’s where the cool stuff happens at the nexus of one’s interests. IMO, people do best when they combine their interests with existing jobs that are out there.
I just gave this as an example. I don’t think my kid has a strong interest in AI or Data Science. But to answer the question – in this particular instance, Google is a special case. Of the three cloud providers, they have the best developed AI infra, and, separately, the cloud providers are expected to mop up any interesting AI offerings developed outside, and offer AI as an add on service on top of cloud. So they are a serious candidate to consider if one is looking for employment in the AI space for the long term simply because they own one of the three large delivery vehicles for that AI.
My kids have done a lot of experimentation in K-12 and we have invested considerable amount of money and time to enable that. We believe in well-roundness and having a variety of interests not necessarily related to your job. Our love for the outdoors and travelling has always been a source of considerable enjoyment and fulfillment for my H and I, both for its health and social aspects.
Our kids know how to do the following things very well: swim, ski, play tennis (my son), travel (every year abroad with us and also international summer camps for several years), hike, camp and occasionally backpack, speak foreign languages (each fluent in two foreign languages). My daughter also played piano from 1st grade to end of HS completing a prestigious 10-level certificate program and putting more than 10k hrs in it. She attained very high level of proficiency but this was not the goal. The goal was that: a) she masters something difficult and learns to not give up; and b) gains an appreciation for the arts. She did not have the divine spark and talent for music performance, something I did not know when I signed her up when she was 7. But we were lucky to find an incredible music teacher who she adored and who taught her so much about how to interpret and appreciate music. I also think this music education showed her that she can accomplish anything that she sets out to do with enough work and perseverence. I consider all the music lessons, practicing, recitals, etc an essental part of her overall education.
However, we did not sign up our kids for all these activities so that they pursue them professionally. They were not that gifted and never wanted to continue with sports or music in college, so this was not a conversation we needed to have. When it came to college majors, we wanted them to have a plan for the overall area they want to go in and start taking appropriate classes from the first quarter. My daughter in the UK had to pick a major because that is how the education is set up there. My son is in a T-5 college. We cannot afford for him to start experimenting broadly, especially when he wants to have a rich social life and do a quarter abroad. So, he had to sit down and do his research of the available majors and the classes needed before start of freshman year.
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I agree that you don’t need a data science major to pursue data science. Few colleges even offer a data science major. However, there is a lot of variability in generalizations beyond that.
For example, there are differences in requirements for an internship and for a full time job, particularly in regards to credentials. The first data science job it Google that came up in a search includes the includes the following preferred requirements. I also listed the first Data Science Intern as a comparison.
Gogle Data Science Intern: Preferred Requirements Include
- Pursuing a Master’s degree in Statistics, Data Science, or similar quantitative discipline
- Experience with statistical software (R, Python, S-Plus, SAS, or similar) and with database languages (e.g., SQL)
- Experience with data analysis
Google Data Scientist: Preferred Requirements Include
- PhD degree in a quantitative discipline.
- 4 years of relevant work experience, including expertise with statistical data analysis such as linear models, multivariate analysis, stochastic models, sampling methods
I interpret the intern requirements as favoring statistics, data science, or similar type of master’s over other fields; even if they accept students from other quant fields. A lot of it may relate to how closely the field that was studied relates to the job position, rather than just quant vs non-quant.
However, the full time job listing does not have that implication. Elsewhere in the full time job listing they specify “quantitative discipline” to mean “e.g., Statistics, Operations Research, Bioinformatics, Economics, Computational Biology, Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Electrical Engineering, Industrial Engineering).” They don’t have a specific degree like you must major in data science to pursue data science. Data science actually isn’t included in their list of PhD/Master’s fields. However, they want a grad degree in a relevant field, and probably more importantly they want relevant work experience doing something similar to the job. Rather than having a degree in a specific, uncommon subfield like data science, one of the best ways to show that you can be successful at the job is to have experience doing something similar to the job.
If I look up other Google jobs, some say they want a specific major/degree and some do not. For example, looking up an entry level software engineering job, the requirements are listed as follows. The job listing doesn’t imply that even a bachelor’s degree is required, if the applicant has sufficient experience, let alone a specific major. And Google has been known to hire a significant number of persons without bachelor’s degrees as SW engineers, who have quality experience and ace interviews (that require CS knowledge to answer questions correctly). However, I’d expect the CS major is preferred over a no bachelor’s or unrelated major, all else being equal.
Google Entry Level SW Engineer: Preferred Requirements Include
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience
- 1 year of professional software development experience
- Experience programming with two or more of the following languages: C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Go, and/or Python
- Experience working with one or more of the following: web or mobile application development, Unix/Linux environments, distributed and parallel systems, machine learning, information retrieval, natural language processing, networking, developing software systems, and/or security software development
For most people, it is easier to learn the necessary CS by studying CS at a school with the help of instructors and some curricular structure, even though some people can self-educate the necessary CS on their own.
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